America: Indebted to War

A somewhat critical reader pointed out recently that my commentaries as of late have concentrated heavily on the foreign policy debate currently taking place in the Republican Party; in which once settled terms like “isolationist” are now called into question; the neoconservatives’ long dominant influence on the party becomes more clear and troubling; and a critical eye is cast on the formerly solid GOP consensus promoting muscular foreign interventionism—now that the Bush Doctrine has become Obama’s too.

I told this reader that the argument over the GOP’s foreign policy consensus is the most important debate taking place in America today. My reader disagreed, saying that, no, the battle over the national debt and whether to raise the debt ceiling was the most important debate.

“Yes, exactly” I replied. He seemed confused. He’s not alone.

Every politician now says we need to significantly reduce our national debt. The Democrats’ eternal answer is to cut virtually nothing and to increase revenue by raising taxes. The only thing this would do—and all it has ever done—is give Washington, DC the ability to spend more money. This is the reason we have such massive debt in the first place.

Our only hope for reducing the national debt currently lies with the Republican Party, but only a very small handful of Republicans are serious about reducing it. The current hoopla over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling is primarily a debate over simply capping spending, not cutting it. Rep. Paul’s Ryan’s controversial entitlement reform plan is primarily aimed at saving Medicare, not reducing spending. When the Republican-controlled House was given the chance to actually fight for spending cuts in April, it settled on $38 billion in “cuts” to proposed future spending—and even this bit of useless politicking was later reduced to a measly $352 million. Remember, our national debt stands at well over $14 trillion. Clearly the Republican Party of John Boehner is not serious about sizable spending cuts.

So who is? The most significant Republican proposal to actually reduce spending to a degree in tune with the severity of our problem was put forth by Sen. Rand Paul. Paul introduced a plan in March that would balance the budget in five years and reduce the debt by $4 trillion. Paul’s plan sought not simply to stop or reform spending—but to cut it—the very thing virtually every Republican claims to support and agrees must happen.

Paul’s proposal failed in the Senate 7-90. All seven “yea” votes were Republican.

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina was one of those Republicans. During an interview on WTMA talk radio in Charleston, South Carolina last week, talk host Richard Todd asked Sen. Lindsey Graham about his South Carolina colleague’s “yea” vote: “I wanted to ask you Sen. Graham because I know you want to try to get us out of debt. Sen. Rand Paul proposed a budget… that got seven votes… one of them was Jim DeMint… one of them was not yours… so we want to know why you would not have supported a budget that would have balanced the budget in five years, getting serious about it?”

Replied Graham: “I’m not going to vote for any budget that reduces defense spending by over 40%. And I’m not going to vote for any budget that reduces our defense capabilities at a time we’re under threat.”

It was reported last month that the total cost of our Middle East wars post-9/11 stands at $3.7 trillion. This is just the official number—which should be taken about as seriously as Obama’s official cost of national healthcare. $3.7 trillion is also roughly four times the cost of Obamacare—which virtually every Republican agrees America cannot afford.

The largest expense in our annual budget is entitlements. The second largest is defense spending. Republicans like Graham often go to great lengths to point out that defense doesn’t really cost that much. Yet when these same Republicans are asked why the size of government and debt doubled under President Bush, what’s their typical answer? We were fighting two wars.

They can’t have it both ways.

Yet to date, Republicans have. In supporting the U.S. intervention in Libya, encouraging one in Syria, and advocating a permanent American presence in Afghanistan, Graham is certainly one of the more hawkish Republicans. But the extent to which his party agrees with him on foreign policy is a primary source of our debt problem, and if you asked each Republican who opposed the Paul budget their reason for doing so, chances are you would get an answer similar to Graham’s.

Few Republicans have offered any alternative budgets to Paul’s that feature actual cuts (the most notable would be Sen. Pat Toomey’s, which also recognized the necessity of defense cuts), precisely because achieving such a feat must include a reduction in Pentagon spending. Only six of Paul’s GOP colleagues appeared to understand this mathematical truism last March.

We spend more on defense now than at any time in our history since World War II and 72% of Americans now say the U.S. does too much around the world. The current debate in the GOP presidential primaries is whether the party will remain that of Bush—one that continues to police the world through countless open-ended commitments for questionable reasons at an exorbitant cost—or become a Republican Party that believes there are practical and fiscal limits to what our military can achieve around the globe.

America’s ability to finally reduce its national debt hinges upon the outcome of this debate.

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18 Responses to America: Indebted to War

He was confused. How could he not be confused?
The Republican Party as such has been wholly owned by the defense establishment for over 30 years. It chose not to educate its constituency to the historic opportunity presented by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the re-unification of Germany and the end of the Cold War. Instead it promoted the patent nonsense that Islam was an existential threat and a suitable, not to say, handy and convenient enemy to replace the Soviet empire. It thus expected to keep itself and the establishment buoyant. 10 disastrous years later, how does it give up on this without giving up its soul and revealing itself as having been profoundly wrong.
The Party at minimum requires a purge and even with one is probably beyond reconstruction.

How can you balance the Federal Budget when every “dollar” that is put into circulation is debt based. Its an Impossibility. We have paper debt backing paper money buying real goods and services.The interest payments alone are not payable. The problem is that our money system is fraudulent and designed to not only collapse,but to funnel the wealth of the nation into the hands of a few elitist bankers.Back in the day when our money was Constitutionally correct (gold and silver) our nation was not only an economic powerhouse but was the largest creditor nation in the world. Today, our National Debt is not only going to choke to death the Nation economically,but create a nation of debt serfs that will destroy our Middle Class and enslave the American people for the next 5 generations.Already our national “leaders” are selling off much of our national assets to our creditors,especially the Chinese,in order to continue the farce of a debt backed currency. Ron Paul is right,its time to End The Fed,balance the budget with real money and dismantle our bankrupt,corrupt welfare/warfare state. To continue along the economic road we are now traveling is national suicide.

Rand Paul’s budget proposal is a blind man’s solution to a bigger problem: America’s financial and military based economy. Remove one or the other, and there’s nothing left. The problem has been here since the Great Depression, which was turned around by war and Bretton Woods. Unfortunately, Harry Truman freaked out when the airplane industry went into a slump and started the Cold War to revive it. Since then, with the possible exception of the high tax, pro-manufacturing-tariff Eisenhower years, the US has been spending money on defense as alternative to creating a real economy. What Rand Paul proposes to do is shut down our bogus economic fixes. Unfortunately, nobody has produced an alternative or even woke up the public to the need for one. Frankly, if Rand Paul were still a physician, I doubt whether he could figure out how to survive without the Medicare, let alone whether he could figure out how to build an American peacetime economy. At least Ronald Reagan had the smarts to make room for a high-wage American auto industry by negotiating quotas with Japan.

DeMint is typical of most of congress. Doesn’t want to reduce spending on defense because of the pickle we have gotten ourselves into trying to run the world. Is there anyone left in congress that has an ounce of sense anymore? Vote them all out and if you don’t we come closer to the abyss.

Jim Dooley wrote: “The Party[GOP] at minimum requires a purge and even with one is probably beyond reconstruction.”

A patriotic high colonic and ship all the detritus back to Tel Aviv.

As a conservative, I now see the current GOP, with its failure to recognize how our inept foreign policy has contributed mightily to our current econommic mess, as a bigger threat to our republican well-being than the democrats ever were.

We have 700 military bases around the world, many in countries like those in the Central Asian “Republics” whose rulers are as bad as the groups we are fighting against. We remain in NATO long after that organization has lost any value and meaning to us. The idea that we should commit ourselves to going to war if any of those countries, especially say the Baltic Republics are attacked is ludicrous.

Paul Ryan’s proposals were never serious because he refused to touch defense spending even though the defense budget is more than virtually the rest of the world combined. The Constitutional case for the entitlements he wants to save can’t be made and never could be. (If James Madison as a Congressman could not find the article in the Constitution that allowed him to spend his constituents funds on behalf of benevolence then it’s not there in the document and all federal social welfare spending, however good intention wise, is patently unconstitutional and conservatives should be looking for ways to eliminate those programs, not trying to “save” them.)

The problem is that Republicans and most “conservatives” aren’t really serious here, and in their own way are as bad as their liberal counterparts.

After all none dare call it what it is: militarism, which, according to John Flynn of the Old Right, is one of the hallmarks of fascism. That’s the conclusion he reached in 1944 in his As We Go Marching after investigating Italy, Germany and ahem, America.

Sinclair nailed it in his famous quote about fascism, the flag and the cross though I don’t know if the Tea Party is ever going to come around to that point of view.

“So who is? The most significant Republican proposal to actually reduce spending to a degree in tune with the severity of our problem was put forth by Sen. Rand Paul. Paul introduced a plan in March that would balance the budget in five years and reduce the debt by $4 trillion. Paul’s plan sought not simply to stop or reform spending—but to cut it—the very thing virtually every Republican claims to support and agrees must happen.”

What I find so very, very interesting is that unlike Paul I, Paul II is a Senator. Paul I was a rep, with very limited power. We’ve seen that Senators have a great deal of individual power (see Sen. Sessions, DeMint). But I don’t see Paul II *using* that power.
He could fillibuster bill after bill after bill after…, and perhaps get something accomplished.

Deep political and military restructuring are necessary if the United States is going to continue to exist. However because of the military industrial congressional complex that is about the last thing that can happen. This Establishment has captured the government and frankly it has no use for the United States if it does not dominate it. Additionally as another poster mentioned this long time shift of resources towards those sectors of the economy have caused severe mis-allocation of resources. Should the military be greatly curtailed there would be corrections that take place in those sectors and would probably not be contained to those military suppliers. Additionally there would be more strains on the employment situation if a reduction of forces occurs. The last factor which makes reform all but impossible is the Petro-Dollar. The US military directly or indirectly maintains the Petro-Dollar, primarily through propping up Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states. Without the Petro-Dollar the USD would collapse and with it the economy.

The United States is finished. It can no longer go on as it has been and it is incapable of reform.

What I don’t understand about Lindsey Graham is that he claims to be a Christian. Please find me anywhere in the New Testament where Jesus, Peter, Paul, etc. suggest that “might is right” or “kicking ass around the world” is the Christian ethic. He should get his nose out of the Old Testament where nation building and warring were commonplace and into the teaching of Jesus Christ, after whom his followers were named.

There’s the other shoe in this deficit- the historic low rates of taxation, particularly on corporations and the rich, that has been snuck in and ossified into place over the past fifteen years.

The calculus is simple: if the rich resume paying taxes and the wars stop, all goes back to normal. If the rich and the corporations continue to refuse to pay taxes, and the wars go on, that’s it: there’s no solution short of simply shutting down everything the government does- a course of action now being tested in Minnesota. How does no schools, roads, bridges, garbage collection, police, or street lights sound?

We used to remark about Iran: welcome to the 13th century. 38,000 teachers being laid off in California says the US is about to join them.

Problem solved: Boehner & Co just decided only $2T, not $4T, in cuts needed – for the next decade. Apparently this is the new Republican deficit strategy – pretend it doesn’t exist. It will be interesting to see Mr. Market’s reaction to this policy. Here is one way to look at the deficit problem thus far avoided by the Solons on the Potomac: GDP in round numbers is $14T, the deficit is 10% of GDP or about $1.4T. Federal spending is running about 24% of GDP, Fed revenues 14% so we get the same 10 percentage point hole. Going back for about the last 60 years, Fed spending as a percent of GDP has averaged 21%. Say the boys and girls in D.C. are actually capable of cutting spending to 21% of GDP – not that we are off to a particularly good start as the $38B in cuts allegedly made in April was pure pixie dust; a Washington Post analysis of what actually transpired concluded this exercise was all smoke and mirrors and actual spening increased. However, say we reach the promised land of 21% for argument’s sake. To balance the budget tax receipts have to go up 50% – or my calculator is broken. I see no way around this Iron Law of mathematics, a bit of reality apparently lost on the Tea Party types who think rhetoric can trump reality. No doubt that Ike’s feared military-industrial complex had been a major ingredient in the march to fiscal perdition, most recently the $3.7T spent post 9/11 for “national security” – with no end in sight – “financed” by $2T in Bush tax cuts; that adds up to 40% of total Federal debt now outstanding.

One more thing apparently invisible to Washington: In OBLs “Letter to America” of November 2004 he clearly stated his strategy – “To bleed America white in endless wars in the region.” Executing the enemy’s game plan is seldom the optimal path to victory.

“38,000 teachers being laid off in California says the US is about to join [Iran in the 13th century].”

No it just means that some government-provided “services” are being cut down. These services are unfortunately rather often overpriced, unneeded, underpowered, even harmful and laden with entitlements and problems that will come due “sometimes in the future”. Rather like the other government-provided “services” – justice, violence and war.

There is nothing that says that people are so abysmally infantile that government-provided services are always the only and best solutions. Especially in education.

The article and most of the commentary are well spoken and accurate as perceived by a blue collar kid with enlisted experience who is presently being paid a lot to accomplish little here in Afghanistan.